The Electric KoolAid Curry Test
by Azusa Kuraino
Summary: In which Juri finally finds a way to make Shiori hers. With a few minor catches.


The Electric Kool-Aid Curry Test  
  
"The patient?" The nurse glanced into the room, where the drawn curtain was covering the bed. "Well, there's no reason you can't go in and see him, although he's been mumbling since this morning. Something about miracles and wanting to give them to the one he loved, and something about a goat..."  
  
"I don't care. Let me in!" The apricot-haired girl stomped past the nurse and headed in to the half-lit doorway, clutching what appeared for all intents and purposes to be a wrapped lunchbox. Bringing up the lead was a small darker girl struggling to carry an unwieldy bouquet of gigantic flowers, festooned with a card upon which had been hastily scribbled, in bubblegum-colored ink, "TSUCHIYA + TAKATSUKI = OTP 4-EVA!"  
  
Juri knocked on the wall next to the drawn curtain, stroking the fabric covering the lunchbox. "Sempai? Are you in there?"  
  
There was a rustle of fabric, a cough, and bedsprings creaked. "Ah. Miss Arisugawa. Have you come to say goodbye to your dying senior? Or to crush me under your heel while you have the chance?"  
  
"Tsuchiya-sempai! Tsuchiya-seemmmpaaaaaiiii!" Shiori came gallivanting into the room with her burden of flowers, panting heavily. "Look what I brought yooouuuuu!" Holding the gigantic plastic vase aloft in front of her face, she crashed into an unused IV stand and sprawled across the linoleum floor, water and rose petals splashing everywhere. OTP 4-EVA floated like a raft atop a pool of water.  
  
Juri opened the curtain. Ruka raised an eyebrow at Shiori, who stared up at him with a red-faced grin, her shirt soaked in petals. His gaze darted back to the bouquet of multi-colored roses on his bedside stand, beneath which lay a card reading "Thanks for sharing the goods. I'll never forget the memories. --End of the World."  
  
"Well, no, actually." Juri tossed back her hair, ignoring Shiori as she splashed around in the puddle trying to gather her flowers. "I just came to bring you lunch."  
  
"Lunch?"  
  
She held up the wrapped box, which emitted a peculiar aroma, part spicy, part sweet, with a slight undertone of old socks to it. "Lunch. You eat it, sempai. Don't they feed you here?"  
  
Ruka struggled to sit up in bed, leaning back against the wafer-thin pillows. "Not very well. Is the cooking your handiwork?"  
  
Juri dug her fingernails into the knot of fabric, which revealed a pink Tupperware container as it fell loose. "Not mine, Himemiya's. She had... leftovers." Behind her, Shiori struggled to her feet and proffered the sodden OTP 4-EVA card. He ignored it, pointedly.  
  
"You brought me some of Himemiya's leftover cooking? How kind of you, Juri." He stared down at the congealed mustard-colored curry, swallowing heavily. She slipped a pair of chopsticks into his pale hand.  
  
"Tsuchiya-sempai..." This time Shiori's voice drew his attention, if only perhaps because her blouse had gone transluscent with water. Rose petals clung to the insides of her thighs. "You're my one true love! I just had to come see you when Juri said she was headed here!" She wrapped her arms around herself, beaming. "Won't you let me polish your sword one last ti--"  
  
  
  
Juri leapt to her feet, a little too abruptly, and patted the smaller girl on the back. "Why don't you share lunch with Ruka? It would be so romantic." She tossed her curls again, hiding her face. "You know I only want you to be happy."   
  
Shiori beamed, gazing starrily at the rancid-smelling curry. Ruka glanced around rapidly, looking genuinely flustered; Juri smiled sweetly and began to back out of the room. "Well, if you -want- it, Shiori, you can have it..." "No, sempai! I want to share it with you! It's just not romantic otherwise! Just take one bite for meeeeee..."  
  
The nurse hadn't been altogether sure what hit her the first time, as the orange-haired blur came sprinting out of the room and knocked her against the wall; what happened next-- the voice from inside the room bleating plaintively "Just one bite, sempai! Just one for me!"-- and then the explosion-- made her think that the idea of becoming a nun really hadn't been such a bad one, in retrospect, after all.  
  
******  
  
"Arisugawa-sempai seems so cheerful lately."  
  
"It's funny, isn't it? She was in such a terrible mood just a few weeks ago."  
  
"Miss Takatsuki seems so perky, too. She's been following Arisugawa around everywhere. I thought those two had some kind of falling-out back in middle school. I guess they mended things up again?"  
  
"And that's another funny thing, now that you mention it. I never knew that Miss Takatsuki was interested in fencing before. She used to just stand on the balcony and watch."  
  
"I had no idea she was such a good fencer! I heard she even beat Arisugawa-sempai in a match the other day."  
  
"But she's so helpful, they say. She likes to help the other girls out during the class and teach them new techniques. Except that..."  
  
"Except what?"  
  
"Except the other girls don't always seem to like it much. They say that when she teaches them the stance, she puts her hands in improper places."  
  
"Ew! How scandalous! That girl is so strange. Wasn't she in the wing of the hospital where they had the explosion last week?"  
  
"I don't know! The only thing I heard was that they had a patient in there, and that he kept mumbling his own name and making these funny 'baaaa' noises after the explosion. Pretty crazy, isn't it?"  
  
~Fin. 


End file.
